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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24045775">replantation</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittenscully/pseuds/kittenscully'>kittenscully</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The X-Files</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Episode: s06e22 Biogenesis, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Missing Scene, could be any of the above depending on how you look at it, rating for descriptions of violence/surgical references and metaphors</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 16:41:55</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,524</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24045775</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittenscully/pseuds/kittenscully</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>She’s positive that she’d felt him, the moment that she saw him on the camera feed, pacing in circles and screaming, the sound raw and harsh and still ringing in her ears. He’d looked directly into the camera, directly at her, and she’d felt him, like an extension of her own body, brutally severed and left twitching with muscle spasms against the padded wall. </p><p>[in which Scully gets to him, regardless of the consequences.]</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Fox Mulder/Dana Scully</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>77</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>replantation</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">She’s bursting out of the stairwell and into the psych ward before anyone can question where she’s headed, stolen lab coat pulled snug over her shoulders. The hallways are clean and white, patient and sterile. Scully feels anything but. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">The cruel twist of fate that brought them here had been sharp enough to give her whiplash, and it came right when things were finally starting to look up between her and Mulder – helping each other in shared hallucinations, regaining each others’ trust, and even playing baseball, of all things, without a care in the world. And then, suddenly, this. Mulder’s splitting headaches, so intense that she buzzed with sympathetic pain all the way across the country. The sinking feeling that something is terribly, terribly wrong, the one that’s worsened dramatically since her arrival at the hospital. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Every time she looks down, she’s shocked to find herself clean of lacerations or ecchymosis, no sign of external trauma. No bloody footprints left behind her on the tacky linoleum. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"><em>He’s a danger to anyone</em>, the doctor had said. She’d wanted to shove him against a wall with her forearm at his throat, demand to know if he had any idea who he was talking to. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">It’s taken years of practice to keep herself contained in these situations, to temper that kind of protective fury. In hindsight, all of it might as well have been in in preparation for the moment when she caught sight of Mulder on that monitor, alone and suffering, and was told she couldn’t get to him. That he would be a danger to her, as if he didn’t need her like oxygen. As if he hadn’t raced halfway across the world with a gunshot wound, hauled her a hundred feet out of the ice, and wrapped her in his own coat because he couldn’t live without her.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">She’s positive that she’d felt him, the moment that she saw him on the camera feed, pacing in circles and screaming, the sound raw and harsh and still ringing in her ears. He’d looked directly into the camera, directly at her, and she’d <em>felt</em> him, like an extension of her own body, brutally severed and left twitching with muscle spasms against the padded wall. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Scully had paid attention in medical school. She knows the history as well as she knows him. She’s aware of what’s at stake if she can’t get to him soon.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">May 23rd, 1962. Boston, Massachusetts. Everett Knowles, a skilled baseball player already at twelve years of age, walked off the train tracks holding his own severed right arm, still tucked into the sleeve of his shirt. His parents acted with the speed of those fearing for the life of a loved one. Treating time as a valuable commodity was always the most crucial step in the advancement of medical science. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">That’s why it’s Agent Fowley’s blatantly false, simpering worry that infuriates Scully the most. The other woman had ignored that ticking clock when she neglected to contact Scully, even though she’d admitted that Mulder had been asking for her all night. Whether the delay was for her own selfish benefit or for the benefit of the people she worked for, Scully can’t be sure. But there isn’t a doubt in her mind that it was inexcusable. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Agent Fowley had reeked of dishonesty today, just like she always has, and Scully can only conclude that Mulder has been too weak and vulnerable to see it. She learned a long time ago that he’s fatally desperate to trust, to find someone, anyone, who will listen. He's never been good at differentiating the lies from the truth, or the allies from the enemies. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">She’s shouldered that responsibility proudly in his stead: to know when someone is a risk, to put herself between her partner and any threat, taking the beating without complaint to keep him alive and whole. Letting him cling to her after, supporting his weight or covering his body with her own. His comfort always placed willingly above hers, even when she’s the one who’s suffered more. Even when every part of her aches, and she herself is no longer whole. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">And now, she’s failed when it matters the most, and he’s been cut away from her. Skin split, tendons shredded, exposed bone and nerves screeching with phantom pain. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Now, as a result of Agent Fowley’s inaction and her own failure to protect him, the time she has left to get them out of this alive and whole is slipping away with every step she takes.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Everett Knowles was brought to the emergency room of Massachusetts General Hospital with his detached arm in tow and little hope on the part of his family. Partially severed limbs had been reattached previously, but never one that was fully severed. Dr. Roland Malt, chief resident at the time, was not willing to accept the possibility of such a loss in one so young. Reportedly, he worried at the potential of giving the child a dead limb, or of neglecting a more severe injury in his attempt to turn back the clock and make the boy whole again.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Scully places her thumb over the pulse point in her wrist, checking for signs of life, of possible damage to the heart and circulatory system. She glances downward, at her dark suit and blouse, lab coat still sterile white in contrast. Another check, and another glance, until she can convince herself again that her only injury is the space left where he was torn away, searing pain from the crude amputation, and the phantom ache of him, trapped alone in a room somewhere on this floor.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Shivering, she glances up at the numbers protruding over the doorways. The halls aren’t crowded, and thankfully, no one spares her a look. Up ahead: 513, 515, 517. 519.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">
    <em>Mulder.</em>
  </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">She gives herself one, two, three moments before entering. There’s only a small window, and she can’t bring herself to look through. Instead, she rests her head against the door, hands curled into fists by her sides, fingers growing numb from pressure.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"><em>He’s a danger to anyone.</em> </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">For a few seconds, Scully swears she can see through wood between them, feel him leaned against the padded wall. Graying flesh on ice, congealed blood on the carpet, shredded nerves and tissue growing closer to necrosis with every passing moment. She knows, without a doubt, that he is only a danger to himself, and to those who would keep them separated.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Dr. Malt and his fellow doctors reported the deathly shade of Everett Knowles’ skin as they began the process of rejoining the arm to his body. The mangled blood vessels inside the limb and the socket. The team worked on anyway, maintaining hope in the face of improbability. Doubt and nihilism were a waste of time in medicine, and there was no wasting time with a future at stake. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Scully does not have forever to reach him. Soon, they’ll realize where she’s gone, and she won’t have time to get to him. Soon, he’ll be dead meat, and if she manages to keep going without him, she’ll have to live on crippled, a widow to her own body and to his. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">A deep breath, and a moment of fumbling. And then, she twists the lock, flips up the latch, and tugs open the door, just enough to slip inside. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Gingerly, she pushes it shut behind her. The loudest sound in the room is the rush of blood in her ears. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Mulder,” she exhales. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">He’s a heap in the corner, facing away, as if the two padded walls will shelter the wide open wound of his mind. She’s beside him before she knows she’s moved, the gravity of their proximity sinking her to her knees and dousing her cheeks with tears. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">One hand on the back of his neck, skin hot and sticky with sweat. The other feeling desperately over his shoulder, his spine, searching for a heartbeat. He shudders reflexively under her touch, and the noise he makes is hollow. Barely human.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Oh, Mulder. Oh, I’m so sorry.” <em>What have they done to you?</em></span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Often, surgery is a process of separation, cutting away the diseased flesh to save the animal. With Everett Knowles and his arm, it was a process of reunion. First, Dr. Malt’s team rejoined the tangled web of blood vessels, then bone, then fascia and skin. The accounts held no mention of what it felt like to be in their shoes, to hold two parts of a whole in the moments when life was seeping away from both. To take two ends of frayed rope and weave them back together just in time, as the water threatened to break the hull and the ocean just outside grew hungrier.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Scully has always imagined it as an act of creation, like birth. Like a consummation of love.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">This Mulder is not the solid weight that she’s shouldered many times before. He is not vital and heavy and clinging. As she gathers him desperately into her arms, he’s a shade of himself, sunken eyes and stiff bones, a hospital gown that smells of bleach. He slides down her chest when she pulls him against her, head lolling until she fits it into the hollow of her neck. He doesn’t try to hold her back. He doesn’t look at her. He doesn’t speak. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">She doesn’t think that he can.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">This rejoining is not an act of creation, she realizes, and it’s nowhere near the consummation she’s hoped for. It’s triage. It’s scooping seawater out of a lifeboat with a single bucket as the pounding of the waves knocks her to her knees. It’s crouching over a dying body with only two hands and torn clothing to stop the patient from bleeding out.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">There are no guides for this, no diagrams to work from, no tried and true methodology. There’s only an arsenal of distant information and the memory stored in her hands, moving over his back as if to check for injuries. Blindly identifying each muscle with her fingertips as if praying the rosary. <em>Deltoid, rhomboid major, infraspinatus fascia, erector spinae, latissimus dorsi, internal and external obliques…</em></span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">In the back of her mind, she knows that all of this is visible on the monitor downstairs, that people will be coming. That she doesn’t have much time to salvage what’s left of the two of them. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">She presses her mouth to his forehead, clammy and pounding under her lips. She hears herself murmuring his name, a litany of round syllables repeated over and over, a prayer, but not to God. She laces her fingers through his hair and rocks him, cradles him against her, pleads with him silently to come back. To prove her right, to show them that he isn’t a danger.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">After the first ever replantation was performed on Everett Knowles, skin and muscle grafted carefully and gingerly together, there was nothing for Dr. Malt to do but wait. The surgery was done, and the community prayed for a miracle, not a candle left unlit in the church. And whether it was a miracle of medicine or of God, or both, the pulse returned to Everett’s reattached wrist, and his skin grew pink again, like a newborn, where it had so recently gone gray with death. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">When she hears Mulder inhale with intention for the first time, her own chest inflates to match, her eyes flying open. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Mulder?” she asks, more clearly now, tilting her head back and framing his face with her palm. “It’s me, Mulder, it’s me.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">And when he moves, just a little, his hands opening and shifting as if to reach for her, she starts to cry. “<em>Mulder</em>.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">She blinks back the tears as quickly as she can, unwilling to let him go to wipe them away, and searches his face for any sign of the recognition that she can already feel in him. All she needs is the barest hint of tangible proof, even if only to keep for herself after they drag her away again.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">He blinks, and she watches, breathless with rediscovery, as he finds her with his gaze. His fingers curl at her waist, mouth parting helplessly, as if he wants to speak.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“No, no, you don’t have to say anything,” she manages, almost dizzy with relief. “It’s okay, I know you’re still – still in there. I know you need help.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">As he exhales and softens, she clasps him tighter, the ache of loss a quickly numbing memory, the pain of pulling him back together subsiding as the sea evens out. The time she has here, with him, is still running out, but the urgency dissipates as she kisses his forehead, sureness that they’ll recover from this growing in its place.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">When Everett Knowles’ parents arrived at the hospital the day after the surgery, they expected the worst; to find him swaddled in bandages and barely functional. Instead, they found him in only a cast, smiling and alert. His mother remembers that he asked his father if he would be able to play baseball again. That part of the story never included a definitive answer, no matter where you looked in the textbooks. The emotional kicker, Scully thinks, comes from knowing that he had been hopeful enough to ask at all. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">She bites down on her lip, remembering that night mere weeks ago on the baseball field, Mulder’s arms wrapped around her just like hers were now wrapped around him. The warmth of him, solid and strong and surrounding her, and the way he had laughed and rambled, despite her smiling protests that she needed to focus. There will be no unanswered question this time, she decides, no painful stasis of not knowing. They’ll make it out of this, and they’ll play baseball again. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“I’m going to figure this out, Mulder,” she murmurs, as she hears the pounding footsteps coming up the hallway. Their time is nearly up. “I’m going to figure out what’s happened to you, and I’m going to help you. Just hold on. Please, just hold on.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Making a noise low in his chest, he manages to grab a handful of her shirt, as if taking her plea literally, and she manages a weak smile even in her building distress. There’s voices outside, growing louder by the second, and she pulls his face into her neck, murmurs an apology for having to leave him again. Prays that the temporary separation isn’t excruciating, that the fresh stitches and pins and grafts hold steady.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">She’s always imagined herself to be be the kind of doctor who could reassemble a body someday. She’d just never anticipated that it would end up being her own. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">He paws at her waist, hiding against her, and she doesn’t think that she’ll be able to resist telling him this time. The <em>I love you</em> is halfway up her throat, desperate to crawl out, just in case she doesn’t make it back, just in case this is the last time she gets to hold him.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">And then, the door bangs open, and noise floods the room as the timer reaches zero. </span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I woke up with this idea today, and I just went for it. It doesn't directly contradict canon, but I feel like it's implied to, so that's why there's the disagreement with the tags. You can't tell me this wasn't what she wanted to do, or that this wasn't what she felt when she saw him on that monitor. Replantation is in fact the surgical term for the reattachment of a limb, and the story about Everett Knowles and his doctor is, according to my research, entirely true.</p><p>You can find me on tumblr @kittenscully, where this will also be posted! Please comment/let me know what you think.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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